Marc Faber on The Economy, Ferraris And Bentleys

Yesterday Marc Faber first made a guest appearance at the Ira Sohn conference, warning his audience to prepare for war, then promptly shifted to Bloomberg’s offices where he discussed his outlook primarily on China, but also on the US, with Carol Massar, once again warning about war. As usual, he did not mince his words, warning of a “recession”, and predicting that China is simply not growing fast enough in real terms. Nothing new. He did however branch out into the topic of class divergence in both emerging and developed economies: “in front of far too many luxury hotels there are far too many Ferraris, Maseratis, Bentleys… I see a boom everywhere, except for the working class, except for the lower, middle class. But among the well to do people the wealth that is floating around and the prices you pay for high end properties is incredible, and I think that will come to an end, and a lot of people will lose a lot of money… I was in La Jolla, Laguna Beach, Newport Beach, I was in front of a restaurant smoking and I’ve never seen so many Ferraris, Maseratis, Bentleys and fancy cars anywhere in the world, and this is in America. I am not saying this is wrong, but there is an opulence among a small group of people that is huge when there are lots of people that are struggling. This gives me a bad feeling because I’ve seen so many emerging economies when they were booming, that was the time to get out.” As for the US economy, Faber agrees that the only thing that can help is a massive crisis (or “conflagration” as David Stockman calls it) that jars America out of its hypnotic state. And, sure enough, it will come.